During the last two weeks of the school year each of our various regions held their year-end celebrations. Each function was different – the Boland children visited Graceland in Paarl and swam while the Robertson children were taken to the Spur! One thing each function had in common was that every child, received a shoebox filled with stationery, toiletries, clothes and other goodies from the super people at the Shoebox of Love project. Thank you to all those who...
We have been monitoring the children in our programme academically since 2012. This has been done as consistently as possible by means of a June and November exam administered to all children from Grade 1 until Grade 7 (and for a few projects until Grade 11). This allows us to now look back at the past 5 years and determine the long term impact our interventions make for our beneficiaries. When we compare the academic results from 2012 to the...
Children at Buffet Olives farm enjoyed an enlightening and inspiring talk by South African Olympic rowers, Lawrence Brittain and Shaun Bryce Keeling. They even got to hold the silver medal which the pair won at the 2016 Rio Olympics!! The athletes shared with our learners the success they will enjoy if they just persevere and have the right positive mindset – wise words and absolute proof as Lawrence has battled cancer… and won. As they say to one another: “BELIEVE”! Huge thanks...
Children at Buffet Olives farm welcomed the Drakenstein Mayor, Councillor Conrad Poole, to their after-school on 9 November. He was very interested in finding out more about our 3 R’s Programme and so enjoyed watching the drama games that he jumped up and joined in! The Mayor noticed how much the children enjoy the programme and was particularly impressed with the way in which facilitator, Catharine discussed with the children how lessons from the game can be applied in their everyday...
Ariane Kleinhans is a professional mountain biker from Switzerland, who currently lives in Stellenbosch. She has taken first place on the podium at many MTB events around the world, including winning 3 Absa Cape Epic titles! On 23 October 2016, after easily winning the ladies’ 42km race in the Buffet Olives MTB Classic, Ariane headed over to our pump track for some coaching with our girls. Ariane would demonstrate a technique and the Buffet Olives girls would copy. By the end...
After 5 years of trying, team “Revenge of the Nerds” finally clinched 1st place! We had a very successful evening at the 1%Club Pub Quiz Fundraiser on 30 November and a whopping R14 500 was raised for the Anna Foundation!!! Everyone had a load of fun, a number of teams dressed up, and thanks to our generous sponsors, we had an abundance of spot prizes pouring forth throughout the evening, not to mention the super team prizes for the brainy...
Well before sunrise on 16 October, 200 children and facilitators in Montagu, Ashton, Robertson and Worcester, clambered onto buses for the 2 hour (-plus!) trip to Cape Town, ready to run. The day of the Gun Run had finally arrived, and we were the proud beneficiaries. For many children, this was not only the first trip out of town but also their first time in Cape Town, AND seeing the sea! Yellow t-shirts dominated Beach Road in our special 5km run. The...
We are extremely proud of our boys and girls from Buffet Olives farm who rode in the Buffet Olives MTB Classic on 23 October. All of our children did incredibly well and Curtley (photo, left) finished 3rd overall in the Mens’ 14km mountain bike event! In the Mens’ 5km race, Linwill came 1st and Sturton, 3rd while in the Ladies’ event, Vanashly came 1st and Jadelyn finished in 2nd place. We are certainly seeing some talent in our youngsters! PHOTO CREDIT: John Hishin –...
Reading: We are always looking for effective ways to introduce our children to new texts and to focus on reading for meaning and enjoyment. Shared Reading is a whole-class activity: the children follow a text together, listening to how the punctuation, expression and intonation should sound, as the facilitator reads to them. With older learners multiple copies of the same text are needed while with younger children, Big Books or enlarged texts are used while the facilitator points to each line as...
We celebrated the official launch of our new cycling Pump Track at our Buffet Olives project on 22 September with friends and invited guests. The track was designed by Eckhardt Kühn (Adrenaline Activities Coordinator at Cascade Manor) and built under his expert supervision with a team of Anna Foundation children who were very ‘hands-on’, right from the very beginning! Among guests present were a number of well-known faces in the biking world, including professional MTB-er Adriaan Louw, Junior SA...